Rise Up and Fight for the Robin Hood Tax!
Everything you need to know to outfit your Merry Band and move into action as local Robin Hoods.
We need a Robin Hood Tax!
On October 29th, as the Presidents and Leaders of the Group of 20 Nations meets in France, people across the world will rise up and demand that our G20 leaders immediate impose a 1% #ROBINHOOD tax on all financial transactions and currency trades.
The message is clear -- Whose Side Are You On? The side of the people and increased job creation, shared prosperity, and an economy that works for all of us or the side of the 1% ultra wealthy and Wall Street, deepening inequality, economic instability and unrest?
A Robin Hood tax is a tax on financial speculation that would generate $1.3 trillion dollars across the world that could be reinvested in people, job creation, greening and rebuilding our roads and bridges, and lifting millions out of poverty and hunger. Even with this tiny tax on a fraction of the easy money sloshing around the global casino each day there would be enough money to fund every social and environmental program in the world.
Wall Street and Big Banks must pay their share for our economic recovery.
Here are three ways to share the responsibility for our recovery:
- Financial Speculation Tax: This tax, less than one percent, would tax short term and often speculative activity- the sort of thing that helped create the crisis- and generate billions of dollars of revenue. For ordinary investors, the cost would barely be noticeable, but for Wall Street traders’ activities, it is estimated that such a tax could generate up to $150 billion a year.
- Fairness in Taxation: Not in our nation’s history since before the New Deal have those with the most contributed the least. During the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations at the heart of America’s greatest economic boom, marginal tax rates were 90% on the wealthiest among us. The marginal tax rates must be raised across the board and tax avoidance like the “carried interest” or “hedge-fund managers’” loophole must be closed.
- Bush Tax cuts for the wealthiest should expire: Over $700 billion dollars in revenue would be generated in the next ten years by allowing these tax cuts to run their course. Income growth over the last thirty years has largely been captured by the top one percent of earners. Tax cuts for the wealthy, as demonstrated above, do not make their way into the economy as a whole and do not create jobs. Everyday people, Wall Street, Big Banks and the wealthy must all pay their fair share for our economic recovery.
Assemble your Merry Band!
http://OccupyTogether.org >>
Photos
Robin Hood costume templates and guidelines below...
A project of National People's Action (NPA). Credit Seth Tobocman (www.sethtobocman.com) for the Robin Hood graphics and David Solnit for the costume design.
